That's definitely my favorite one. I was watching some Voyager episodes with my friends and I told them it was a Star Trek rule that if a bunch of key characters and then some random ensign beamed down the ensign would usually die. They didn't believe me until it happened 5 episodes in a row:)

I think he's come to terms with the fact that he was fifteen and the writers overused his character. His actual acting wasn't that bad -- and that's with him as a young'un actor next to the likes of Patrick Stewart. The recent stuff he's been in (the crazy homeless guy in CSI, for example) has been downright good. Wesley was a poorly handed character, but not due to Wheaton's performance.

It doesn't have to be php, just a few people have suggested funny captions for a crusher 'despair' poster - I thought a poster generator ala the church sign generator [churchsigngenerator.com] would be amusing.

I do get the correct page for page 1 and 2, for 3 I also get the "This site has reached its bandwidth limit." I didn't notice that when posting. But it seems the original site is back up, so here [echosphere.net] is page 3. I don't know how long it takes for the Coral cache to refresh, but it's not needed for the moment anyway.

Why the @#*&! do the require a password before they will allow someone to give them money!? With a hundred hits per second or so of Slashdotters getting the "Bandwidth limit / Please try again later" message, you know it would be a whopping 29 seconds before some random visitor tosses $2.95 into the pot just to see the damn page.

Ok... if they are worried about legal issues relating to authorisation from the original site creator to continue serving the content, fine. Just put a check box on the account creation page to saying "Allow anonymous donatations to help pay my bandwith bill?" and default the checkbox to "accept" while you're at it.

It's good for the hosting company. It's good for the site creator. It's good for vistors to the site. It's a Win Win Win all around.

Hmmm, I don't know about that... It seems like this pay-per-view model of internet browsing could destroy the "free-ness" or open-nature of the internet. I guess there are already plenty of sites where you have to pay to see certain content, but this seems different somehow and not in a good way. Then again, I was never accused of being an optimist.

Who needs posters? In memoriam James Doohan. The longest surviving "Red Shirt" on the USS Enterprise, his "Scotty" set the standard for generations of geeks and engineers. Working with the latest future technologies, often experimental, under a demanding boss for whom FTL travel, teleporters, galactic communications and more firepower than all of 20th Century Earth combined weren't enough to cakewalk through missions on any given week, Scotty's role model has influenced millions of 20th Century predecessors. His ingenuity, fortitude, and sense of humor while telling the boss that his demands are insane, but doable, even under excruciating time pressure floating around a newly discovered dimension, are an inspiration to us all. Mr. Doohan, in your new journey, go as boldly as you led us in all your merely astral journeys on our televisions, and in our imaginations.

If you are a true Trekkie, don't click on the link, as this is certainly going to offend you..."

Actually, if you are a true Trekkie, you would call yourself a Trekker, and spend several hundred hours defending this naming convention in various news groups, and in arguments with actors who may have once appeared on the damn show.

I suspect the 'humour' doesn't cross the pond that well. They all struck me as either oft repeated lame jokes or just statements of the obvious. No real humour and nothing that raised the remotest of a wry grin. Sorry guys, these were just pants.

I grew up watching Star Trek, so I retain an affinity for it to this day. Although I am not a hardcore Trekkie, I still watch the show when it is on TV. To understand why the original series is the way it is, you have to understand what was going on culturally in the US during the time it was being aired.

Even though it is 40 years old, over the top, campy, and hilariously non politically correct, I find it better than most of the crap on TV nowadays (or perhaps I am just too old).

I hear you. I can still remember the excitement for the first episode.We (my family) were at some friends house for a party just for that show. My father and the host worked together at Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA)

At that time, the show and special effects were near cutting edge, and a lot of the concepts in the show were new and strange- cool!

The plots were standard fare, but that's true of any show- it's damn near impossible to come up with a totally original, never been done before story line and plot. All of the basic ones have been done for centuries I guess.

"At that time, the show and special effects were near cutting edge, and a lot of the concepts in the show were new and strange- cool!"

Was Star Trek one of the first shows aired in color? If so, was that part of the appeal? Erm... Apologies for the phrasing of that question. I'm not asking because I'm gunning for a 'gimmick' argument. I'm just curious. I'm under the impression that the 60's was a heck of a decade for a geek like me, I'm just fishing for more info. It must have been an interesting time

60's were strange. We had various bad news war coverage all the time, still civil rights issues, riots, etc. but when it came to space, it's like everything stopped. All the channels covered space shots, they would suspend regular programming and just follow it all day long. Just about everyone loved it. It was something to just feel good about. So when we got a modern (for then) space show, it...took off is the word. Even though it was cancelled quickly, and no one really knew why besides the producers. An

No, color was gradually introduced over the course of the early 1960s, and most primetime shows had switched to color by the time Star Trek debuted. It was still a novelty in those days, and Trek's primary-colors palette was designed to take advantage of it, but it had plenty of "in living color" competition for the attention of viewers (well, as much competition as two other networks could offer). On the other hand, keep in mind that the majority of homes still had black and white TVs (meaning the only way many viewers could identify expendable security officers was by the darkness of their shirts). So I wouldn't pin much of its appeal on color.

Trek's novelty came mostly from new-to-TV special effects, its relatively serious approach to sci-fi (contrast with "Lost in Space"), and its flirtation with ideas in an era of "Gilligan's Island", "I Dream of Jeannie", and "Gunsmoke".

"I'm under the impression that the 60's was a heck of a decade for a geek like me, I'm just fishing for more info. It must have been an interesting time when computers weren't ubiquitous and all the new ideas were bubbling to the surface. Then the moon landing... wow."Moon landings- wow! Yes!As for the rest of your post, I'll refer you to this:( by zogger (617870) Friend of a Friend on Sunday August 13, @04:07PM (#15899474)(http://technocrat.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 05, @06:31PM)60's were str

"It's beyond me while people always fall in love with such crap. Or is it a some kind of relax when you turn off your brain partially and watch Star Trek for example?"

I never really enjoyed FireFly or Farscape. Is that because my tastes are 'superior' to everybody else's, or is it because everybody else is getting something I'm not? I'd love to go with the former, afterall it's more flattering. Chances are, though, it's the latter. My point is that I wouldn't go around elevating myself because I don't like a popular show.

How are the slashdot editors supposed to know which sites have limited bandwidth?

They could email and ask? When you can take small websites completely offline with the amount of traffic Slashdot gets, it's irresponsible to not give any warning or caching, especially when your excuse [slashdot.org] is that you just can't wait six hours for this "cool breaking story". Hands up everybody who just couldn't wait another six hours to see Star Trek posters?

Or, if you want the techie approach, something similar to robots.txt would be simple for high-traffic websites like Slashdot to respect.

Seriously, anyone coming to Slashdot for "cool breaking stories" has their head up their ass. You come to Slashdot for discussion. I can't recall ever being informed by or interested in the actual story or, god forbid, the write-up. They exist to set a topic or get you pissed off.

Maybe there was some point, long ago, when that was true... most of the time it's slashdotted and the "news for nerds" is written by CNN or some other mass media, which is decidedly uninteresting for nerds. Anyone interested in world events has seen it elsewhere before it comes here. Book reviews have gone the way of the dodo. The gaming articles are gamer angst or painfully obvious.

The only articles I really enjoy are the interviews because they're the only unique content I don't know already, except for

Just curious what specific information tells you that individual readers look at the stories more than the comments. Often I'll look at the top layer of comments and only open one or two that interest me. I might open the story itself in another tab and spend ten seconds browsing it before I jump into the comments. Or if a comment specifically refers to the story I'll go back into the story to find it. How do you use logfiles to root out my preferences from this behavior?